NEWS

Chucky’s Intense

Basketball great Michael Jordan’s trademark facial expression was his protruding tongue as he drove to the basket for a lay-up. Kyle Faino of the Pacific Northwest 8.0 team competing at the national championships has his own signature gesture: a gaping open mouth as he serves.

“Looking at a photo, you’d think Kyle’s screaming his head off each time he serves,” states Adam Rogers, captain of the Seattle-based team, “but strangely enough he doesn’t make a peep.”

“What even stranger is that Kyle doesn’t even know he’s doing it,” adds Rogers. “We think he looks like the Chucky character from that series of horror movies and that’s the nickname that our team gave him. But Kyle has never figured out why we call him ‘Chucky’. We even call his mixed doubles partner, ‘Tiffany’ after the character from the “Bride of Chucky” movie.”

“He’s playing well and we don’t want to do anything that might mess up his game during the championships, so we’re not gonna tell him the reason behind the nickname” continues Rogers. “We’ll keep him off USTA.com until the championships are over on Sunday afternoon.”